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From Back to Godhead

By Bhayahari Dasa

Are we simply puppets, helplessly manipulated by the strings of our past activities?

I look on with dismay as the tow truck drives away with the wreck that used to be our car.

“It’s all right,” my wife tries to console me. “Probably some bad karma.”

I consider her words. She has just mangled our car by driving it into the rear end of a truck, and she seems quite eager to let destiny take responsibility for her actions. I wonder if it’s really bad karma, or

By Yadubara das

Srila Prabhupada stayed in Tirupati for three days, and the highlight of that trip was a special early morning darshan at 2:00 a.m. I remember it was just a very mystical atmosphere, entering the Deity room by torchlight and then coming in front of Lord Venkateshwara and the pujari waving the ghee lamp to illuminate His form. It was wonderful to see Srila Prabhupada gaze in reverence upon his Lord.

Source : http://www.dandavats.com/?p=51810

Varnasrama Dharma is the society of Vaisnavas in their conditional stage.’ (Bhaktivinod Thakur in Sajjan Toshani)
A 3-day seminar on Vedic Sociology was held at ISKCON Juhu under the aegis of IDVM-India on 1st – 3rd of October 2017. The seminar was given by His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami Maharaj. Posters of the event were displayed in the temple premises. Information about the same was also circulated on social media. There was a lot of excitement amongst devotees for the seminar.
The first

By Padmapani das

Our dear Godsister, Saradiya devi dasi, departed from this world on Sri Krishna Saradiya Rasayatra to be with her eternal father, Srila Prabhupada. Her sincerity and love for Srila Prabhupada is unparalleled. May we follow in her footsteps.

(Saradiya dancing for Srila Prabhupada, San Francisco, 1968)

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada very kindly accepted me as his disciple in the beginning of January 1968, giving me the name Saradiya Devi Dasi, “servant of t

By Madhava Smullen

ISKCON Youth prepare to go out on Harinama in Las Vegas. Harinama on the strip will be a major focus of the new temple.

By Vraja Bihari Das

We are afraid to make chanting our number one priority in life because of the fear of failure.

Chanting Hare Krishna can be the most humbling experience, especially if we make it the most important goal of our life. Krishna is inaccessible to the conditioned souls; those who are not qualified won’t get access to Krishna’s intimate association. He reserves the right of not being exposed to the conditioned souls. Thus chanting can expose us to our own disqualifications; chanti

We will be posting some of Lord Krishna’s childhood pastimes durning this month of Damodara (Kartika)

All the gopī friends of Yaśodā and Rohiṇī enjoyed the naughty childish activities of Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma in Vṛndāvana. In order to enjoy further transcendental bliss, they all assembled and went to mother Yaśodā to lodge complaints against the restless boys. When Kṛṣṇa was sitting before mother Yaśodā, all the elderly gopīs began to lodge complaints against Him so that Kṛṣṇa could hear. They sai

By Madhava Smullen

On Friday September 15th, Bhaktimarga Swami, “The Walking Monk,” crossed the finish-line for his 3,550-mile walk across the USA in San Francisco, beneath shining blue skies and rolling white clouds.

It had been two years since he set off.

This wasn’t the Swami’s first adventure on foot. He has walked across Canada from coast to coast four times; and he has trekked across Ireland, the Fiji Islands, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, and Israel, to promote a more simple, healthy and

By Niranjana Swami

I was introduced to the Krishna consciousness movement and introduced to Srila Prabhupada by first receiving a copy of Bhagavad Gita As It Is. Sometimes people ask me “When was the first time you met Srila Prabhupada?” And my answer is always “I first met Srila Prabhupada in the fall of 1972,” and that is because that was when I got my first copy of Bhagavad Gita As It Is. That was my first meeting with Srila Prabhupada, when I purchased Bhagavad Gita As It Is in a book store

By Satyaraja Dasa

This is an article published recently on the important online scholarly magazine MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute).
MDPI is an academic open-access publisher with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Additional offices are located in Beijing and Wuhan (China), Barcelona (Spain) as well as in Belgrade (Serbia).
Their publishing activities are supported by more than 15,700 active scientists and academic editors on our journals’ international editorial boards,

By Sayer Ji 

Chanting (mantra) is an ancient technology that, as modern science reveals, connects us in a very real way to the farthest reaches of the universe.

I love chanting mantras, and I do so daily as an integral part of my kundalini yoga practice. I don’t need to know the specifics of how it produces a calming and sometimes even transcendent effect on my consciousness, but I’ve always been deeply curious about the mechanisms that may be at play beneath the surface of my awareness.

This i

Sri Damodarastakam
By Sri Satyavrata Muni
From the original 1974 “Songs of the Vaisnava Acaryas” songbook

This eight sloka prayer is sung morning and evening during the month of Damodara, which begins today.

namāmīśvaraḿ sac-cid-ānanda-rūpaḿ
lasat-kuṇḍalaḿ gokule bhrājamanam
yaśodā-bhiyolūkhalād dhāvamānaḿ
parāmṛṣṭam atyantato drutya gopyā

1) To the supreme controller who possesses an eternal form of blissful knowledge, whose glistening earrings swing to and fro, who manifested Himself in Gokul

By Giriraj Swami

“It is important that devotees take care of each other. Like other people, devotees have different aspects to their lives—physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. So we want to support each other in all these ways. Of course, with devotees, everything is for Krishna. We help each other in all respects to better serve guru and Krishna. That is really our goal: gopi-bhartu pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanudasa—we want to be the servant of the servant of Krishna, the maintainer of the

By Giriraj Swami 

Today i.e 05th Oct 2017 we begin the beautiful month of Damodara. The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 4, says, “There is a statement in Padma Purana describing the ritualistic function during the month of Karttika (October–November). During this month, in Vrndavana it is the regulative principle to pray daily to Lord Krsna in His Damodara form. The Damodara form refers to Krsna in His childhood when He was tied up with rope by His mother, Yasoda. Dama means ‘ropes,’ and udarameans

By Vaikunthanath das

It is a miracle of good fortune that Srila Prabhupada’s disciple, Saradiya dasi, should leave her physical body on the very day of the Sri Krsna Saradiya Rasa-yatra (October 5, 2017). She left at 6:15 a.m. San Diego time. The time zone in India is twelve and a half hours ahead of California, so it was 6:45 p.m. in Vrindaban at that moment. The moon rose at 6:03 p.m. in Vrindaban. So Saradiya left her body just as the moon was rising above the horizon in Sri Vrindaban Dham.

By Kadamba Kanana Swami

In 1986, I was very involved in the construction of Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi in Mayapur. There was NO LIMIT to what had to be arranged for that building! One day I looked at the Samadhi and it looked like a huge face with a big mouth, and the mouth just said, “Aniyor! Aniyor! Bring me more! Bring me more!”

And I brought trucks of cement, steel, bricks, stone, marble. I brought engineers and draughtsmen, drawing and technical experts and I had to deal with endless thing

By Nishanta-lila Dasi 

Sri Damodara-janani is the latest book from Sivarama Swami and the fourth volume of the Krishna in Vrndavana series, a unique retelling of the damodara-lila that weaves a captivating tale of the glories of Mother Yasoda.

No other person has ever received the unique mercy that Krishna showed His own mother, teaching devotees for all time that the binding force of love for Him is more powerful than even His own supreme will. A lila that stopped the demigods in their tracks,